This Web site is being prepared for public viewing but it is far from complete.
Please do not bookmark it: the address may change.

Transcript

Notes

G.N. Lepeshkin: These people had a mindset to... His task was, once the vehicle arrived, to remove the instruments. Position them and return to his place. But all this was accompanied... put on protective clothing, take safety precautions, do everything at exactly the designated time, fit it all in and so forth, the guidelines... Those were their duties. Like an artillery loader: he goes up to the cannon, he knows what to turn, he knows what to screw on, he knows where... What can anyone come up with that's new here? Nothing.

Slava Paperno: But if a person is so uneducated, so illiterate and doesn't know anything, how does he...

Lepeshkin: No, you explain to me,.. you know about putting on a [protective] suit? If he puts it on wrong... There were these smoke chambers. So this box was hanging there. Not a box, but what was hanging there was, what should I call it? A bell-shaped vessel. A sack. So he would walk into this sack and move his head like this. If he did something wrong he would jump out, he would have tears running down, his nose would be running, and he wouldn't know what to do. This is something called a chloropicrin chamber. Now, you're talking about responsibility. If he didn't do all this responsibly, he would immediately run into this trouble. So everybody there tried to be very responsible about everything.